


Don't Tell Me You're Sorry (Show Me the Monster)

by orphan_account



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen, wssummer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-28
Updated: 2014-05-28
Packaged: 2018-01-26 22:46:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1705346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Set after season 1, while Grant is in SHIELD custody. Jemma pays him a visit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Tell Me You're Sorry (Show Me the Monster)

HYDRA would have killed him. No question. HYDRA didn’t take prisoners. They kept people alive long enough to bleed them dry of valuable information, then disposed of them.

SHIELD, or what was left of the organization, wouldn’t kill him. Once in custody, his life was secure. Every day that passed, he regretted that they’d taken him alive more.

The interrogation he could handle. Even the occasional rough treatment from the guards- well, he’d had worse. (He was still waiting for May to follow through on her threat, but he supposed it would happen when he least expected it.)

No, the worst part was the isolation. The time he had alone to think about his life, his choices. To remember Garrett, the man who shaped him. He replayed Coulson’s words.  _"You’ve got the rest of your life to wrestle with the question, who are you without him?"_  Grant had no idea where to start.

Jemma came to see him in his cell 8 days after he’d been taken into custody. It had been late in the afternoon, around the time a guard delivered his meal, and so he didn’t look up when the security door opened. He didn’t look up as he heard the soft padded steps as she walked down the hall to his cell, and he didn’t look up as she came to stand in front of the glass pane.

He looked up when she said his name.

"Ward."

That’s what she called him- what she had always called him. No matter how many near death experiences they saw each other through, she never called him by anything other than his last name, sometimes accompanied by “Agent”.

He did nothing to hide the surprise he felt seeing her standing there. He stared openly, drinking her in. She looked tired, and had a cut on her forehead that was in the process of healing, but she was alive. That’s what he’d held onto, when Coulson had told him. He hated himself for a lot of things, but he was glad that killing Jemma didn’t have to be one of them.

He waited for her to say something else. He waited for her to yell, to cry, to spew hatred at him. It didn’t come. He realized as he watched her that she didn’t know what to do. He wondered if she even knew why she was there.

He stood carefully, keeping eye contact as he gauged her reaction. She took an instinctive step back as he approached the glass separating them, but then held her ground. He could see her release a ragged breath.

He stopped a foot in front of the glass, and she stepped towards him to match his distance. They stared at each other for a minute before speaking.

"Fitz is alive", Jemma told him without preamble. The words were hard, determined- Like she was willing him into life by saying them.

Grant nodded minutely. Coulson had told him that.  _"You failed, Ward. My team is still alive. You didn’t hurt us."_  Grant knew that was a lie. He’d hurt them plenty. He could see it in the lines on Coulson’s face, and in the way his shoulders slumped when he walked away after speaking with Grant.

"I-", he started, not knowing the end of his own sentence.

"Don’t", Jemma said, shaking her head. "Don’t tell me you’re sorry."

Grant bit the inside of his cheek in an attempt to stay quiet. He didn’t even know if he  _was_  sorry, not in the way he should have been. His mind was in jumbles. He didn’t know what he felt; He didn’t know who he was.  _"Who are you without him?"_  God, those words haunted him.

"I’m here", Jemma said, her voice shaking, "because I needed… something… I suppose I wanted to see if you looked as evil as I imagine you do in my nightmares."

Grant looked away and closed his eyes as he saw her tears threatening to fall.

"You don’t", she continued, and he knew she was trying to hold it together. "Why don’t you look evil?" He heard a sob, and screwed his eyes shut tighter. He didn’t want to see her crying. He didn’t want to see her bare and vulnerable, not like this.

He only dared look over when he heard her slide down the wall. She was hidden from his view, but he could still hear her muffled crying. He hesitated, unsure of his next move. He approached the wall, and turned to slide his back down it. He knew he was directly opposite her, and that she’d heard him, because the sound quieted. He rested his head back against the wall, and waited for her to leave.

He fell asleep there, waiting.


End file.
